


Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

by mindbending



Series: Two Drama Queens Loose on a Shirshu [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Gen, Humor, Injury Recovery, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Abuse, and taxes, june adopts zuko au, now featuring arm wrestling, some light poison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27372292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindbending/pseuds/mindbending
Summary: “So,” the nurse says with a murderous smile, “you obtained a recently traumatized twelve-year-old child.”“He really might be older than that,” mutters June.“Then you gave him a long lecture on how the world’s full of dangerous opponents who might commit violence against him at any time.”“That’s nothing he didn’t know already...”“And then, to initiate combat practice, you tossed aknifeat hisface.”“I said ‘catch!’”Okay, so maybe someone should’ve stopped June from adopting a kid.
Relationships: June & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Two Drama Queens Loose on a Shirshu [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974361
Comments: 272
Kudos: 1882
Collections: Finished111





	Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).



> This entire series owes a debt to [Salvage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21116591/chapters/50249441), MuffinLance’s excellent “Zuko gets adopted by Hakoda’s crew” AU. That fic’s influence is particularly strong in this chapter, between the fashion shenanigans and Zuko’s interest in...medicine? Loosely defined?
> 
> Previously in this series: Zuko ran away from the Agni Kai with a fresh burn scar. He ran right into June, who’s taken him on as an apprentice. He’s given her the fake name “Kuzon,” because he is clearly a master of evasive maneuvering.
> 
> Hand-waved canon alert: My June uses he/him pronouns for Nyla, rather than calling him “it.” I’ve also decided that June’s home base tavern is in the rural part of a Fire Nation colony and feels pretty Earth Kingdom, culturally speaking.

“So let me review this, to make sure I’ve understood,” Yawen says with a smile that’s about as pleasant as a rusty dagger. “You obtain a twelve-year-old child.”

“He really might be older than that,” mutters June.

“He’s recently escaped from firebenders, who deliberately burned off half his face.”

“We sure it wasn’t a stray fireball?”

“So you give him a long lecture on how the world’s full of dangerous opponents who might commit violence against him at any time.”

“That’s nothing he didn’t know already!”

“And then, to initiate combat practice, you tossed a knife at him-“

“Sheathed.”

“- at his face!”

“I said ‘catch!’”

Yawen stares at her like she’s contemplating breaking her healer’s oath to do no harm, just for June. Mercifully, she instead shakes her head and re-enters Kuzon’s room. June peeks in behind her and finds he’s still curled on the bed, wrapped up in a blanket, face buried in his knees. A perfect statue, except for how his back shakes as he struggles to steady his breathing.

June’s pretty sure she’s banned from child-rearing for the night. She stands on the threshold for a moment, letting the wind lash her without buttoning her coat, and thinks maybe, just maybe, she’s bitten off more than she can chew.

/

These past couple weeks, June’s been dropping in on Kuzon every time she’s returned from a hunt. His burn’s healing rapidly under Yawen’s watchful eye, and his mood’s lightened. On prior days, she’s given him perfectly gentle, reasonable paperwork. 

For example:

  1. She gave him letters to draft, contacting assorted prisons and courthouses about criminals that might need catching. She only made fun of him a little for using old-fashioned, fancy characters- “What palace did you learn those at, Your Highness?” She might’ve complained more about the tortuously courteous syntax- “Just write ‘no’ when you mean ‘no,’ I don’t want anyone mistaking me for _polite.”_ He’d taken the critique without complaint and provided a perfectly edited set of letters the next day, in handwriting that’s neater than hers. She might have been embarrassed at how much neater, if she hadn’t made a vow to kick unnecessary shame entirely out of her head.
  2. She gave him maps to compare, drawn by different people at different times, and he made a list of all the differences. Turns out the Fire Nation's on a damming spree, rapidly changing the courses of several rivers. It’s also on a cartographic campaign to inflate the size of its colonies. Between that and the overreaction to that one poem on sizes, Ozai’s definitely compensating for something. (Kuzon flushes bright red when she utters this remark. Ugh, she’s got a prude on her hands.)
  3. She gave him a dispensatory describing assorted herbs and their usually dangerous effects, plus a list of symptoms. One of her competitors- no, the word “competitor” makes it sound like they’re at the same level, though June is clearly leaps and bounds ahead- has allegedly concocted a new poison that steals a victim’s sight, hearing and voice for a full day. She tasks him with listing all the substances that could possibly be combined to such an effect, to figure out whether it’s a real thing or just another industry rumor. By the time she checks in again he’s got weary shadows under his good eye and enough notes to write a dispensatory of his own.



He’s proved himself remarkably bookish and disciplined for his age; his interest in the poison list would’ve alarmed her if she was in literally any other field. He’s taken her orders without protest and produced results. But June figured he’d get bored of the scrolls- spirits know she would- so she’d tried to spice things up.

With a knife.

And now he’s huddled up like a blanket sushi roll- seriously, the part of his face that hasn’t scarred pink went white as rice.

“Evening,” she says to the bartender, the second the tavern door slams behind her. “Make it a double.”

/

June is not used to making apologies.

She has to head out early the next morning, because it’s an easy job and someone might beat her to it; she’d told Kuzon as much. The whole ride there, she mutters to herself, practicing. As soon as she deposits her target at the relevant jail, she starts up again.

“I sincerely apologize,” she recites to Nyla, the one being who won’t laugh, “for throwing a knife at your recently scarred face.”

(She feels sick just thinking about it.)

(His scar’s from flame, not metal, but she didn’t get a wink of sleep last night.)

She practices several more times after reaching town and then gets honest with herself. She’s cycled through at least ten kinds of phrasing, but she’s not the one with the fancy characters and pretty niceties. She can’t come up with anything that doesn’t sound insincere or straight-up sarcastic. 

When she arrives at Yawen’s, she knocks on the kid’s door. There’s a shuffling, and then he opens it.

“Sorry about last time,” they say in unison, like they’d rehearsed it.

She laughs first, and waves it off while walking in. “For what it’s worth, I don’t like knives flying at my face either.”

“I’ll make sure not to let that happen,” he says, with a sincerity that catches her off-guard.

“You feeling better? Got some sleep?”

He nods vigorously.

June gestures at the dispensatory open on his bed, though she hadn’t assigned any additional reading last night. “You gave yourself extra homework?” 

“Yeah,” he says, shifting on his feet. “My mom used to have this book, I always wanted to read it.”

June’s eyebrows shoot up, because that’s a rather _specialized_ dispensatory, and what would an actress need with a list book of toxins? A second later, she remembers the trend out of Ba Sing Se of injecting poisons into faces, to attack the nerves and- supposedly- freeze out wrinkles.

(Oh, Ba Sing Se.)

“Also, um, I made you a gift?” He reaches onto the shelf that Yawen’s nailed back onto the wall and pulls off a vial filled with red liquid. “I was looking around the garden, and Yawen had planted what she thought were bacui berries? Those are great, apparently they work as an antidote to some poisons, but I looked in the book and bacui berries don’t bloom in winter. So those had to be maka’ole berries.”

He hands the bottle to her. She takes it with a quizzical look.

“So do I drink it?”

His good eye goes wide. “No! No, it’s just that maka’ole berries cause blindness. And I don’t have anything to take away someone’s voice or hearing for a day, so it’s not as good as the other poison. But I read the blindness lasts for months, if you drink even a teaspoon of the juice or it gets in a wound, so I got some gloves and…”

He trails off and looks at her, pleading for something.

“You…” June stares down at the little bottle, suppressing the urge to laugh. “You really know the way to a girl’s heart.”

He looks down, fidgeting. “I just want to do this right.”

She cocks her head to the side. “You know I’ve never done the apprentice thing before, so-“

“I know,” Kuzon interrupts in another breathless flood, “and I am grateful that you’ve made an exception for me, and I’m sorry I’m not working harder, it’s just my brain won’t focus sometimes and I don’t know-“

“Hey,” she says, a little sharper than she means to. “I was going to say that, because I’ve never had an apprentice before, I’ve got no standards. There’s no bar you have to meet. Provided you don’t get me killed, you’ll be the best apprentice I’ve ever had.”

He looks up at her owlishly, blinking back what might be a fresh round of tears. It occurs to June that she could’ve put more of a positive spin on that.

“Besides,” she amends, “you’re doing fine so far.”

And now he serves her with a look of pure skepticism. It’s just as good as hers.

“Yeah, sure, the thing with the knife wasn’t ideal. But I _hate_ paperwork and reading-“ she gestures at the scrolls and books that have gradually, naturally accumulated around Kuzon’s room- “and it seems like you don’t.”

After a second, he shakes his head. “I can’t concentrate like normal anymore, but I don’t _mind.”_

June shrugs. “Let’s look at the worst-case scenario here. Pretend you’re so psychologically stunted that you can never handle combat again.”

He flinches. 

“So you’ll be my researcher, and if you want you can bribe me with poisons on the side, I won’t complain. Is that so terrible?”

Visibly confused, Kuzon tilts his head. “Would that be...okay? I thought you took me on because of my swords-“

“Sure, but if you just end up as my personal secretary? I can live with that.”

Less paperwork means more time on the job, which means more money. It’s not the worst arrangement.

Still, she can see the doubt in his eyes.

“For tonight, I’ve got more paperwork for you,” she says, dropping a giant file of disorganized slips and clippings in his hands. “Accounting.”

His eyes light up. It’s heartwarming, and more than a little hilarious.

/

June accepts a job she shouldn’t. There’s a runaway earthbender wanted for murdering half a garrison of Fire Nation soldiers, and it’s _stupid_ going after powerful benders, at least without backup. June hops off Nyla the second they get within sight, because a shirshu’s too big and easy of a target for flying boulders. She runs up alone, dodging rocks and pausing to hide behind a wall. She’s armed with shirshu spit darts, but those won’t take effect with just a glancing blow.

So she coats a knife in red berry juice instead.

Takes careful aim.

Delivers an earthbender to a Fire Nation camp, trussed up and paralyzed but for her mouth, which screeches loudly about how it’s not fair to attack someone who can’t _see._

/

June decides to buy Kuzon a gift.

This sparks a series of small crises. She hasn’t done much in the way of proper gift-giving in her lifetime- outside of taverns, where free drinks flow all around. She has no idea how to repay someone who gave her a bottle of surprisingly useful poison. Weapons are out of the question so soon after the knife incident, so should she just give him a bottle of a different poison? Would Yawen strangle her if she tried? She considers just giving him cash, but that’s a bad precedent- he might realize he can make poison for money, and then he might start selling to other bounty hunters, and that could snowball out of control in ways she can’t predict. 

It’s nice, having her very own secretary-cum-poison maker. She’d like to keep their little arrangement exclusive.

So what, she asks herself, does a growing adolescent need?

/

“Hey,” June says that night, striding into Kuzon’s room as soon as he opens the door, “your maka-whatsit juice worked great, so I got you something too.”

She holds out two bottles- personal care products. He takes them with a befuddled frown.

“Thank you? But I already bathe regularly, I don’t think I need these-”

“You wanna walk around town with everyone looking at your scar?”

He blinks at her. “...No, but it’s unavoidable. That was the point, right?”

She lifts her eyebrows until he looks, really looks at her. At the black hair brushed carefully over one eye.

“You don’t have a lot of hair,” she says. The only long part’s the lonely ponytail, on the back of his otherwise fuzzy head. “But this-“ she lifts one bottle- “is gel, to keep it stuck over your eye.”

He frowns. “People will laugh.”

“They’ll accuse you of being a copycat,” she says. “It’ll be my hairstyle, but terrible.”

Kuzon scoffs.

“Up to you,” she remarks, “whether that beats the alternative.”

“What’s the other one do?” he asks, rather than answering her head-on.

She glances at the second bottle. “Promotes hair growth. Your hair’s already growing back in, this’ll give you shoulder-length tresses by summer.”

He snorts at “tresses” and then grows thoughtful again. When he speaks, his voice is small and serious. “I was. Um. I was thinking of cutting it all off.” When June leans back in exaggerated surprise, he flinches a little but keeps going. “I don’t…” He sets his jaw and makes a declaration. “I just don’t think I ought to have long hair.”

She gapes in genuine bewilderment. “What, it’s bad with your bone structure?”

“What? No. I mean, maybe but…” He takes in another of his deep breaths to compose himself. “They cut it off for a reason.”

“Sure, to treat the burn.”

“Not just that,” he says quietly. “Because I lost my honor.”

“You need me to hunt it down for you? If you’ve got a scrap left for Nyla to smell-“

“It’s not funny!” he squawks in a sudden flash of anger.

June looks at all five feet of him, from his shoes to his balled-up fists to his quivering ponytail. “Fine. Can I ask _how_ you lost your honor?”

That question seems to shrink him at least a foot. “I disrespected someone important.”

“Would it make them feel better if you walked around bald for the rest of your life?”

“I...what?”

She gestures at his head, and the scar. “This was _all_ some sort of Fire Nation military mess, wasn’t it?”

Kuzon confirms her suspicions with a lot of offended stammering.

“Well, there’s no army in this town,” she says, spelling out the obvious. “So whoever you disrespected isn’t around anymore. By now, they probably don’t even remember you.”

Now his eyes well up. It is pretty sad, isn’t it, the way the army tears through towns and leaves scars in its wake, sometimes without caring to even ask the place’s name...

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kuzon grits out.

June drops the two bottles on the shelf and then wheels back around. “Well, let me guess: some random firebender, probably military, was mad. Then you came along. Maybe you did get in the army’s way a little, maybe not, who cares. Either way they proceeded to blow things way out of proportion and got extra-mad at _you, personally,_ because there’s no consequences for taking out your problems on a kid, and now they’ve waltzed off to burn down more of the world while you’re stuck here, with that scar. Do I have any of those facts wrong?”

He’s got his mouth open, like he really wants to raise an objection. It never comes.

Finally he snaps his mouth shut and tries a sensible statement. “Is it better for bounty hunting, if I hide the scar?”

June considers her answer for a couple seconds. “I think so. Fewer questions. Less memorable. People won’t be so tempted to aim for your face.” She immediately regrets that last bit. “Not that you _have_ to be involved in violence, I’m just saying, it’s a hypothetical-“

“I have to.”

“...You said it, not me.”

“There’s something in me that’s violent,” he blurts. “And that sounds weird, and it’s not cooperating right now, but I have to get it back or I think I’ll explode.”

And _that_ sounds like melodrama. 

(Like the same kind of melodrama a teenage June indulged in regularly).

“Thank you for these.” Now a little embarrassed over the outburst, he takes both bottles in his hand and inspects their ingredient lists, like a budding poisoner should. “I’ve still lost my honor, and nothing’s going to change that...But I guess I can keep the hair.”

June takes her victories when she can get them.

/

A couple days later, Kuzon declares that he’s finished going through her expenses and identifying costs to cut. Yawen’s set him up with a small desk and two chairs, and June sits by him, feeling a little like she’s going to the dentist.

“So, um, first of all, there’s a _lot_ of tavern bills-“

“Required for gathering info and keeping up good public relations. Next?”

“Oh. Well.” He scratches out half a page of notes, visibly thrown off by her swift answer. “You really could get a better price on all of the meat for Nyla if you made a deal in bulk higher up, with a farm. I think you’re paying an unnecessary mark-up, when you go to the butcher…”

He walks her through a series of surprisingly reasonable recommendations, laid out with numbers and evidence and bullet points. A couple of his ideas won’t work, due to weird complications no child novice could have seen coming, but June intends to take a solid three-quarters of his advice. She’s comfortable enough already, but if his projections are remotely accurate, he’s just paid for his own wages.

“So those are all the cost-cutting ideas,” he says, apparently now flustered by his easily she’s agreed with him. “But there was something else I was looking for, and I didn’t see it, so I thought I should ask.”

“Shoot.”

“Where are your tax forms?”

June freezes like she just got licked by her shirshu. Then, slowly, her jaw falls open. 

_“What?”_

“You- you reside in a colony,” he stammers. “And you do business here. So I don’t know if you should pay anything to the Earth Kingdom, but you owe fifteen-percent of your income in taxes to the Fire Nation every year. And I looked through everything and maybe I just missed it but I didn’t see the forms here-“

“There are no tax forms,” June interrupts with a scoff. “You think I’d actually bother with all that?”

This kid hasn’t batted an eye at kidnapping, or poisoning, or vague references to murder, but spirits forbid she _miss her taxes._ With one mention of tax evasion, he’s judging her like she’s kicked a baby pygmy-puma.

“But,” he hyperventilates, “you’re supposed to. Maybe you don’t like it, but that’s your duty to the Fire Nation!”

So now the kid with the disfiguring burn scar is lecturing her on her _legal obligations to the Fire Nation._ June briefly wonders if that cocktail she had earlier to work up her nerve might have been laced with cactus juice.

She crosses her arms. “Not happening.”

“But if you get in _trouble?”_

“If they want to try hunting me down over the debt, they’re welcome to hire me for the job.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“You want me to fund their weapons when I could be buying my own, how does _that_ make sense?”

Kuzon splutters in response, brains melted by utter despair.

“Anyway,” she sniffs, “if I pay taxes _now_ they might start asking about all my old taxes, so I can’t go legit even if I wanted to.”

His despair shifts curiously to a thoughtful, guilty look, like he’s sitting on a delicious secret.

“What?” she demands.

“You can go in and pay back taxes. There’s a little penalty, plus a lot of interest, but it’s worth it to be honorable.”

Again with the honor. In a massive show of restraint, she doesn’t mock him about it, instead prodding at the original sore spot. “You know something else you’re not telling me.”

He shoots her a dirty look.

“If you want me to pay up-“

“Fine,” he huffs. “There’s an awful loophole, and you really shouldn’t use it.”

That piques her curiosity. “What’s it say?”

“So technically anyone who supplies the Fire Nation military at all gets to write off all their business expenses.”

June scowls. “I don’t supply things to the military.”

“I know,” he exclaims, “that’s why you shouldn’t use it!”

“What else does the loophole say?”

He slumps. “You don’t have to provide concrete goods, services count too.”

Ah. June definitely does provide services to the Fire Nation military. Usually while holding her nose, but it happens.

“Anything else?” she asks.

He sighs and screws up his face. “...you’ll also get the late penalties waived.”

“That’s amazing.”

“It’s the worst,” he protests. “There are merchants who sell one thing to a soldier and claim it, and some people go around supplying the Fire Nation _and_ enemy combatants, so the council really needs to close that loophole fast!”

“But the council won’t,” she says, smirking, “because it’s a bunch of useless old men.”

“...yeah. Pretty much.” He’s deflated like a xiao long bao that’s been poked and lost all its soup, but then a new thought glints in his eyes. “Also, my mom liked animals? We had a lot of baby turtleducks, and she said there was a special program to give credits to people who raise rare animals like that. The credits get bigger if the animal’s rarer or harder to handle.”

June’s got a tamed shirshu waiting quietly for her, outside the building.

Her eyes pop out. “So the Fire Nation will pay _me_ if I file my taxes?”

“There’s no way…” He closes his eyes and runs some mental calculations. “Actually if you let me fill out the form, I bet they will.”

She tosses her head back, laughing raucously. “How the hell do you know this? You did your family’s forms?”

“My family didn’t pay taxes,” he retorts, furrowing his brow like the concept’s inherently absurd. “Wait! No, it’s not what it sounds like-“

Too late, June’s put two and two together. Kuzon’s lost his home and his eye and his last name. He’s fled from the Fire Nation army, and he looked at her funny that one time she’d joked about fleeing short-changed tax officials. Now throw in the fact that he’s convinced his current situation is his fault somehow, and he’s paranoid about the tax code and the consequences of breaking it...

“Is that why you’ve got that scar?”

He squints at her. “I...sort of? They’re definitely related things, I guess they came from the same reason-“

“Say no more,” she says, lifting one hand. “I got the picture.”

He wisely shuts up.

June can put two and two together, and she pities the poor bewildered kid. Clearly, he and his family went down in flames for felony tax evasion.

/

June’s proud of herself for a couple days there. She’s a top-notch bounty hunter. She’s taking care of a shirshu and an apprentice. And now, by some hilarious twist of fate, she’s an upstanding tax-paying member of her community.

Then Nyla bites off more of a steel gate than he can chew and dislocates his jaw.

June pops the bone back in place, evading the tongue that lashes out on hurt instinct. Still, Nyla keens and howls all the way back to town, wrenching June’s heart with every noise. Kuzon enters the stable soon after she does.

June glances up at him. At the hair he’s draped over his bad eye and hardened with gel, like a protective shell. It’s not a pretty look, but from the right angle? It could pass for cool.

“I heard Nyla crying,” he says by way of explanation. “Can I help?”

He approaches before she can answer, coming right up to Nyla’s sore mouth. Nyla doesn’t even threaten to lick him, just presses his snout against him with a whimper.

“He screwed up his jaw, I gotta soften up his dinner,” June informs him with a sigh. Normally Nyla can tear right into a slab of raw meat, but in his state he’ll need it chopped up a bit.

She reaches onto the saddle and unties a giant package of meat, freshly picked up from the farm she set up a bulk contract with. After unwrapping it, she pulls out her knife…

“Hey, Kuzon.”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna take a shot at this?” She holds out the handle of the knife, no sudden movements or throwing. “Nothing fancy, just make it more bite-sized.”

After a second, Kuzon takes it.

“For what it’s worth,” June offers, “if you’re mad at someone-“

“I’m not mad at anyone,” he says rapidly.

“Not even the jerk who burned you?” she challenges, arching her eyebrows. “Anyway, if you’re mad at anyone, just imagine that’s their face.” She points vaguely at the meat. “It’s great for stress relief.”

She steps out to grab a snack at the tavern. When she comes back, Kuzon’s reduced the meat to _soup._

“Like this?” he asks. There’s a ruddy flush down his neck and a slightly gleeful glow in his eyes.

June grins at him. “You nailed it.”

/

“Yawen says I shouldn’t push myself,” Kuzon tells her a few nights later. “But I think I’m ready to train again. If you’d be okay with that? And if we could start lightly somehow?”

June smiles. It’s not easy dealing with someone who can’t handle violence, but she’s thought about it and gotten the perfect solution. Yawen won’t even yell at her for it.

Probably.

“You ever arm-wrestled anyone?”

“...what?”

June gets into position. “Just hold my hand, and force my arm down to your left. I’ll try pushing you in the other direction. First one to hit the table loses.”

She takes his hand. The fever’s long gone, but he’s still comfortably warm. Because she’s feeling nice, she lets him think he’s winning for a solid ten seconds before she slams his hand down to her left.

He narrows his eyes. “How’d you do that?”

She smiles toothily. “Brute strength matters, but it’s also a contest of wits. See, people think the game’s just side to side-“ she tilts her arm back and forth in illustration- “but the truth is the other axis matters too. You can make yourself stronger by keeping your fist closer to your body.”

“So being weak isn’t an automatic death sentence,” he murmurs to himself.

“Right. And surprise is your friend, with games like this. So one way I like to play this is to let things settle into a balance. Let your opponent think the conflict’s just along the main line, and they’ve got things under control. That’s when you give a jerk-“ she suddenly yanks her fist inwards, towards her shoulder- “in an unexpected direction.”

He nods and sticks his hand up again, and again, and again. His sickness has turned his arm muscles to overcooked noodles, but there’s a certain determination that shines through regardless. The kid doesn’t give up. The fifth time through, he even adds in a little twist of his wrist that catches June off-guard and momentarily screws up the angles of her arm.

“Exactly,” she says, even after she beats him anyway. “You’d be surprised how many problems get solved, if you just hit them from a different angle. That’s a nice trick you made up.”

He beams at her, like it’s the first time he’s been praised in his life.

/

Nyla’s jaw heals, more or less. Still, June lets Kuzon keep pulverizing the meat and feeding him. There’s two advantages to it- nothing seals a shirshu-human bond like good food, and the kid gets a healthy outlet for all that anger.

Kuzon heals, slowly. June’s not expecting an overnight miracle, and some days he reports that he hasn’t finished whatever task she gave him, because he couldn’t sleep, or his brain decided to take the day off without his permission. June doesn’t yell at him, even though he’s clearly expecting it.

(He’s expecting it, even though he’s the most organized, studious possible-twelve-year-old on the planet. June saves that tragedy to ponder another day.)

“I’m not in the habit of mistreating coworkers, shirshu or not.” She finally states it outright, and he looks like he half believes her. That progress, right there.

“You sure you want to do this?” she says one day soon.

He unsheathes his knife. They’re not sparring- he’s just aiming at a wooden target June set up in Yawen’s garden- but it’s the closest he’s gotten to combat since the fever broke. He throws a glance at her, his expression thoroughly earnest despite the mask of hair.

“I can do this.”

He sounds like he’s still trying to convince himself.

But as he throws the knife and strikes just one ring off from the center, she believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you are an eligible USA voter, please go vote. This has been a PSA!
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated as always. If you would like to see more of this AU, please subscribe to the series <3


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